Copyright ownership

Generally, authors are the first owner of copyright. An ‘author’ is someone who creates a work in a tangible form, e.g. written, photographed or recorded in some way. Someone who contributes an idea, suggestions or information in non-tangible form is not considered an ‘author’ in copyright law.

Copyright can be jointly owned, and can be inherited or assigned to others via contractual agreement. For the most part, copyright ownership status is automatically given to authors/creators and does not have to be registered. However this may not apply if you are working under employer policies, commissions or contracts that state otherwise.

If you publish your research with a commercial publisher or society, it is likely that you will need to sign a publishing agreement that stipulates who owns the copyright. Copyright can be assigned or licensed. When you assign your copyright, this means you give up your copyright and transfer it to someone else. When you licence your copyright, you are permitting someone else to re-use your copyright material in specific circumstances, however you remain the copyright holder.

When publishing agreements assign the copyright to the publisher, and the usually author retains some rights, for example permission to deposit their accepted manuscript in an institutional repository. Learn more about this in the Library’s guide to espace.

Publishing agreements should be retained by the author(s) so everyone understands any limitations or requirements imposed by the publisher. Open access publishing allows authors to keep their copyright so they can control what is done with their work.

Moral rights are personal rights that are a continuing connection of the author to their work, even if they no longer own the copyright. Moral rights include:

• the right of attribution - to be correctly attributed or credited for the work
• the right against false attribution
• the right of integrity - the work should not be treated in a derogatory way, or in a way that would negatively affect the creator’s reputation.

Moral rights cannot be assigned or transferred, and remain in place up until the copyright of the work expires.

Curtin University’s Intellectual Property Policy and Procedures determine ownership of work produced while employed by Curtin. Distinctions are made for artistic, scholarly and indigenous works produced by staff members, or work created prior to employment at Curtin.

Students own the copyright in their coursework and theses, unless the work contains University intellectual property or is part of a University project.

The Copyright Act 1968 has been slow to adapt to technological developments and does not specifically address the copyright of work generated by artificial intelligence. However, here are some important elements to consider.

In Australia, copyright ownership can only be bestowed on human beings, so AI itself cannot be considered an ‘author’.

Additionally, authors or creators must be able to demonstrate that they have contributed ‘independent intellectual effort’ in producing a work. For example, it is not likely that inputting prompts to an AI tool would be considered enough ‘independent intellectual effort’ to warrant copyright ownership of the output.

To learn more, review the Arts Law Centre of Australia’s information sheet on AI and Copyright.

The term Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) refers to Indigenous peoples’ rights over their traditional culture, knowledge and heritage in all forms that may take. ICIP may be owned communally, and passed down through generations, which can challenge Western notions of individual authorship. Learn more about ICIP. Please see our ICIP page for more information.

While copyright is automatically protected under legislation and international treaty, attaching a copyright notice is recommended because:

• By default, the absence of a copyright notice suggests ‘all rights reserved’, which means users would need your permission to copy, adapt, or share the work.This lets the user know who to contact if they want permission to re-use the work;
• If you want to permit certain types of uses, the copyright notice can facilitate this.

We recommend including the following elements:

• Who owns the intellectual property and copyright of the work
• When the work was published
• Whether you permit people to use the work in any particular way.

The statements can be placed anywhere but are best included in the front matter or immediately following the title page. These statements may also include specific citation details.

Examples:

© Elsie Curtin, 2021. All rights reserved.

© Thomas Logan Robertson, 2021. You may copy and download the material for your personal use and for non-commercial educational purposes. Other uses are not permitted.

Your copyright notice might go into detail about aspects covered by a Creative Commons license and those which aren’t, such as a company logo, for example:

Unless otherwise noted, all material in this document, except the [organisation name] logo or badge, and any material protected by a trade mark, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 Australia licence.